


a little chaos and an open road

by norgbelulah



Category: Justified
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-22
Updated: 2012-06-22
Packaged: 2017-11-08 07:13:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/440547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norgbelulah/pseuds/norgbelulah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the Americana fication.  Prompt was: <i>a marshal chasing kentucky's bonnie & clyde, hook the car up--hit the bar up--clean the scars up--hey yo, the stars up, this is the life of an outlaw</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	a little chaos and an open road

**Author's Note:**

  * For [postcardmystery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/postcardmystery/gifts).



Four men died in Evarts in May of 1931. The company put its boot down hard and the miners stuck a tack in it. A shot was fired and hell broke free.

Boyd Crowder was there to see it.

They called it a battle later, but Boyd had never seen a real one of those, so he couldn’t say one way or the other.

He tore himself away from the fight after he saw the first man go down.

He stole a car and his daddy’s gun and his brother’s girl and he didn’t look back until he heard Raylan was chasing him.

\--

Boyd Crowder was raised in a mine, so he knew more than a damn about dynamite. He knew a hell of a lot more about danger.

And Ava thought he looked damn good in that suit she made him buy.

Boyd taught her what to do. How to pretend like she dropped something, stick the bundle fast under the floor, and let the wire trail out from her bag.

She watched the fire dance in his eyes and slid her foot all the way up his leg when he told her again about the distance. “Okay, baby,” she said. “I got it.”

They didn’t need a big explosion. They just needed a little chaos.

Didn’t everyone?

They did it that way nine times. 

Boyd would come running out of the bank across the main street, heavy bag across his back, and she’d be at the wheel, gun on the floor, hand at the trigger. He’d throw it into gear as he jumped in next to her and she’d slam her foot on the gas.

She hadn’t ever felt so good as when she had the wind in her hair and Boyd’s hand in her lap.

At least not until Raylan caught up with them.

\--

There were pictures in the papers of Ava with a Tommy gun in her hands and a cigar between her lips, sitting up high on her brother-in-law’s lap. Boyd looked like he won the fucking lottery.

Raylan knew they were in Little Rock, because that’s where she filed the divorce papers.

He had no notion if Bowman would sign them.

He followed them down there because that’s all he could do. Boyd was the smartest kid in their one-room schoolhouse, for all the seven years he spent there before Bo put him in the mine.

Raylan joined the army and when he got out, the Marshals got him. 

Anything was better than the mine. Anything was better than helping Bo Crowder and Arlo run moonshine and shoot people. And, at any rate, he liked it. 

He got to shoot people who deserved it and he’d never go to jail for what he’d done.

His car broke down twenty miles outside nowhere and he started walking. When he stumbled on their campfire two hours later, Boyd spoke the words “fate” and “providence” all in one sentence. 

Raylan refused to reply.

They were sleeping under the stars because everyone knew their faces.

He layed down with them, only because he didn’t have enough bullets to stop Boyd from killing him while still allowing him a dignified death and because Ava had been the prettiest girl in all of Harlan County when she lived there.

Ava smoked a camel a minute and said she’d never had a cigar in her life. Boyd had his hands on her every chance he got, like he was making sure she wasn’t about to go running back home on him. She didn’t look like she wanted to. She smiled more than Raylan had ever seen her and he knew her as a child.

They loved each other like breathing. Raylan wasn’t sure anyone knew you could do that in Harlan.

When Boyd asked him if he wanted a drink, he said, “What do you think?”

When he asked Ava why she was on the road with Boyd, she leaned in close before she replied, “You ever done something you know is wrong, Raylan?”

He said yes and kissed her, because that was what she wanted. 

When he felt Boyd’s breath warm against his neck, his cock realized what they had in mind before his brain did.

They threw his sidearm in the grass and later he told people they jumped him.

He woke up cold and alone, the fire dying beside him.

\--

They were maybe fifty miles outside of Springfield when the posse caught up with them. Raylan was fifty-five.

He heard soon after that they were corralled and butchered. Not even like animals, who get a slice across the throat, clean and easy.

Boyd and Ava got a hundred bullets and two closed coffins.

One of the officers, the oldest one, told him they didn’t even get their guns in their hands.

Raylan won’t ever set foot in Harlan again.


End file.
